Daisies

Rating:
Summary: my worst nightmore turned into psychedelic tour de force
Review: i loved this movie!! i thought it would be much jitzy-er, on a crumby budget and a sort of czech john waters or something. not the case, though that would have been good too, but not as fantastic as this wacko pearl of a movie. this movie is a very well-hewn display of technicolor magic. the craftwomanship is no joke. the set design, the splintery abrasive sound production, the distinct and varied atmospheres depicted in these "vignettes", are eye and ear candy for anyone who likes tripped out, nihilistic fun. vera chytilova fully out-goddard's goddard. "une femme est une femme" and "pierrot le fou" seem almost straight forward compared to this.

the two female leads are a good mix of real sexy and real grating. i would say that this movie depicted a real nightmare scenario for me. i could imagine myself falling for one of these girls, who when seperated from the other is actually pretty sweet and cool. then i visit their little art school apartment they have together, i discover the terrifying truth- that my nice sweet pretty arty amour is actually one half of a destructive adolescent femmenstein! i would then probably subject myself to all manners of their cavalier tortures and eventually emerge emasculated and none the richer for it!!!

but alas, it is just a movie, and i'm proably too old at this point to fall for girls like that....but in my twenties...for sure i would have!!

this may not be specifically a feminist movie. i'd say most likely it is politically motivated. it's allegorical, coming from a super turbulent time in world and eastern european history.
it's really worth a look, but if your into "serious" euro "cinema", maybe steer clear. it's pretty silly and abrasive...which is up my alley. five stars for sure!

Rating:
Summary: Amazing!!
Review: I loved, loved this crazy movie. It deals with feminist issues on so many levels all while having a blast. Very colorful very beautiful. Makes you want to go out and raise some hell. I've been looking for it all over and finally found it.

Rating:
Summary: a very important yet rarely seen film
Review: Quite unfortunate that one of the best and most beautiful films of the new wave was banned for most of its life. "Daisies" is a remarkable film. The editing, actors, surrealist film techniques, and humor all help to make this a challenging, yet very rewarding film.
The director Vera Chytilova may have said in interviews that the film isn't feminist, but it's the assumption of many that these comments were spoken in hopes to silence the same critics who had it banned the film. Critics refused its release because they believed viewers identified with the protagonists wasteful and anti-communist attitudes. We do take pleasure in the girls' giddy and childish antics, but I'm sure Chytilova didn't want her film silenced, so she said it was an allegory about the consequences of wastefulness. However, it's really an allegory about women as dolls, scene through a feminist perspective.

Rating:
Summary: Czech girls gone WILD!
Review: Saw Vera Chytilova's *Daisies* the first time way back in the late Eighties at an art-house, which was featuring a retrospective of the aborted Czech "New Wave" of the mid- to late Sixties. I distinctly remember being blissed-out on the ganj (flaming youth!) while watching the movie, and I remember thinking that my altered state contributed a great deal to my enjoyment of what I was seeing. You may feel the need to reach for the chronic too, after watching the opening credits. (More prosaic individuals may want to reach for a highball or two, at least.) I'm frankly shocked, but obviously pleased, to discover that *Daisies* has made it to DVD. (Thanks, "Facets Video"!) Clocking in at 74 minutes, the movie isn't really all that much, but what it has is sublime: a pair of sexy, giggling young buffoons named Marie and Marie who prostitute themselves to hideous middle-aged men for free meals and booze. They're teases, they're rather dumb, they're childish, they're drunken, they're funny as hell, and they see right through the revolting hypocrisy of the totalitarian socialist state in which they're sadly marooned. The last sequence, where the girls break into some commissar's private banquet hall and proceed to devour and defile everything in it, laid bare the hypocrisy of Czechoslovakian political life so thoroughly that it virtually destroyed Chytilova's career. The astounding psychedelic camera work by Jaroslav Kucera, incidentally, is simply icing on the cake. [Be sure to read the transcripts of the letters concerning *Daisies* on the "features" menu. One is from the Official Cultural Commissar of the Czech Communist Party, which predictably condemns the film as "elitist", unintelligible, and not consistent with the aim of glorifying the Workers and Families of the State. The other letter is from Chytilova herself, written to the Czech President some years later, in an attempt to get her career back on track. Unfortunately, she's obliged to employ some Orwellian doublethink by saying that *Daisies* is REALLY about the potential destructiveness of those who haven't learned to be good little socialists.]

Rating:
Summary: Banned in the Czech Republic for good reason.
Review: This film was Banned in the Czech Republic during Communism. This fact has apparently led many to believe that the film was banned because it was offensive to Communists, but in my opinion that is not the case. The film was banned because it's crap.

There is no plot to speak of. The film is basically a montage of random scenes roughly based around the two female protagonists. These scenes have no clear beginning or end and are not tied together with anything other than the artistic transitions between the scenes. These transitions are artistic and the only thing of merit in the film, but the disturbing speed of the transitions could make you sick if they were any faster.

If you're looking for good Czech films Daisies is not what you're looking for, try Kolya, Dark Blue World, or the Fireman's Ball and stay away from this...

Rating:
Summary: A Madcap Ride for Rollercoaster Lovers
Review: Two bored dizzy gals on a colourful, dadaist adventure - I can't think of a film more removed from the social realism of the period. Whether you are into an intentional existential artificiality as sarcasm or just a wild ride, you can have either/or/both with Daisies. I love it.